Our third intern, Michael Schwartz, is a USC student and a writer for the school’s paper, the Daily Trojan.

Easiest way to slide in the NBA Draft? Getting branded with the dreaded phrase: character issues. It’s happening to Louisville guard Terrence Williams.

Williams has had his character questioned during the draft process with no concrete mention of what teams might be concerned about. Chad Ford has also drawn the ire of more than a few Cardinal fans, who think Ford is prepping for the player haters’ ball with his ambiguous shots at Williams in multiple chat sessions.

In his four years at Louisville, Williams stayed academically eligible with no run-ins with the law and seemed to be in relatively good standing with Rick Pitino upon his exit. His shot selection and on-court decision making were sometimes spotty, but then wouldn’t teammate Earl Clark also qualify for the character concerns label given his inconsistent play?

Williams hasn’t displayed any definitive behavior that’s been detrimental to his teams, but it’s fair to say that the guy is eccentric. I really hope that he’s basketball’s version of Andy Kaufman, but the more likely scenario is just that he’s weird for the sake of weirdness.

From a profile in SI:

He often wears custom-made photo T-shirts as tributes to teammates and coaches (his Pitino shirt has a shot of his coach playing point guard at UMass in the early ’70s), and he sometimes shows up for practice wearing two different-colored shoes. At Seattle’s Rainier Beach High he would wear socks emblazoned with childhood icons (from Barney to Big Bird to SpongeBob) during games and carry his books in a Barbie backpack, just to be different. He wore a rotation of Mitchell & Ness throwback basketball jerseys that were in vogue then, but he would add his own curious touch by printing a picture of the player from the Internet and Scotch-taping it over the number on the front.

There’s also a good list of his Top 10 quotes during his time at Louisville, the best of which suggests a second career for Rick Pitinto in dog whispering.

It seems like a fair question to ask whether someone so bizarre is worth the investment of a first-round pick given his maturity (he never developed a reliable jumper at Louisville and went from 12.4 points per game as a sophomore to 12.5 points per game as a senior). But Williams seems like a smart kid with his heart in the right place, more like Gilbert Arenas than Stephon Marbury. And in such a lackluster draft, it’s hard not to root for a guy who can contribute to a team in as many ways as Williams while still having something interesting to say.